Benjamin Wachs: Government’s doing what we ask, unfortunately

If the American people want something enough, our democratic government delivers it. The trouble is that when we want contradictions, pandering, and self-destruction we get that too.

Benjamin Wachs

You can hate the fiscal bailout of 2008, and you can say the government can’t do anything right, but you can’t do both. If the bailout proved one thing, it’s that the government is very good nursing our banks back to health.

After the bailout, the economy didn’t collapse; so that went right. Since then, virtually all the money loaned out by the government’s TARP program has been paid back; so that went right. Since then, the big national banks have made record profits, handed out record bonuses, and hoarded record amounts of cash. That part went wrong — but it’s also where the American people said, “Stop getting involved.”

Sure the government could force the banks to give up their profits, to eliminate their bonuses, and even force them to loan to small businesses, but the American people say that sounds like socialism, and won’t have it. So we don’t.

Getting what we wanted doesn’t stop us from being angry, though. We demanded that the government prop up private financial institutions, but not interfere with private financial institutions, and now we blame the government when those institutions behave badly with our money.

We have the right to bite our own hand with false teeth, I suppose, but the fact is that the government did exactly what it said it would do, did it well, and didn’t do anything more than the American people were willing to accept. That’s democracy in action. If the American people want something enough, our democratic government delivers it. The trouble is that when we want contradictions, pandering, and self-destruction we get that too.

Fairly often, when you look at screw-ups in the American system, they come not because of government incompetence, but because the public can’t make up its mind.

Our outrageous budget deficit is a great example. We demand that lawmakers stop deficit spending. Great; they can do that. But the only items big enough to make a dent when you cut them are Social Security, Medicare and the military. But we don’t want that. We demand that the government not cut a cent of Social Security, Medicare and the military while still cutting the deficit. Fine, there’s an easy fix. Raise taxes on the wealthy. But we don’t want that. In fact, we want taxes lowered.

If we really wanted the deficit lowered, that would be easy. But we want to lower the deficit without doing anything. Congress has listened. Nothing’s getting done.

We support the troops AND refuse to raise taxes to pay for the war and veterans’ care. We demand that states get the power to set their own policies AND we demand veto power over state policies on marriage, schools and a hundred other things. We want new programs that we don’t want to pay for, and we want the government to secure us from terrorism but stay out of our lives. From clean energy to the war in Afghanistan, the American voter is the cat chasing its tail.

The problem isn’t that the government is inept, it’s that we don’t give them realistic marching orders. A schizophrenic voting public gets a schizophrenic Congress.

Our democracy is in trouble. There’s too much money in politics and too many local and state races are being fought by national organizations. Our government is gridlocked, and nobody has the fortitude to make tough choices.

But it’s nothing voters who took leadership seriously couldn’t fix. If only we had such voters.